Replying to a message of JIM WELLER to ROY WITT:

 JW>> (Palin) made the news in Canada again today.

 JW>> Some Hamilton philanthropists booked her as a headliner for
 JW>> a gala dinner which is a fundraiser for charity. A cancer
 JW>> clinic and a hospital refused donations from the gala
 JW>> after getting really angry feedback from their other
 JW>> sponsors and donors due to her being such a strident
 JW>> critic of public health care.

 RW>> Not just any old public health care system, but the
 RW>> crappola being spewed by the liberals in our Congress.

 JW> I certainly hope we can have a fruitful discussion here
 JW> without it degenerating into a flame war. OK, here goes...
 JW> some facts for consideration:

 JW> -1- She attacked the Canadian Health Care System as bloated
 JW> and claimed it would be cheaper in private hands.

 JW> -2- The USA spends $7292 per capita per year on health care
 JW> and yet not everyone has it; Canada just $3895, and it's
 JW> universal.

 JW> -3- The USA is the ONLY country in the developed world
 JW> without universal health care.

 JW> The way I see it (as an outsider) the proposed plan is
 JW> flawed because it is a compromise forced upon the
 JW> administration by conservatives (and not necessarily just
 JW> the Republican Party) and a powerful industrial lobby. I
 JW> could go on about the excessive power held by lobbyists in
 JW> your country but that's fuel for a different rant.         

In countries that have socialized health care (aka 'universal' health
care) the actual costs of providing that care are hidden and are not
visible to those who benefit from the system.

In the US, government sponsored health care (IOW Medicare) does
*not* pay the costs of providing health care to the elderly.  Medicare
isn't even about providing health care to the elderly - it's about
*controlling* the health care provided to the elderly in this country.
While Medicare is quite popular among those who receive its benefits
(which is everybody over age 65, whether they want to be in the program
or not), it is not nearly so popular with those who actually provide that
health care.

Medicare has for decades been notorious for (1) slow pay (90 days after
submission of the bill is not unusual, most industries require payment
within 30 days), (2) disallowing charges it doesn't like and (3) writing
itself huge discounts (sometimes more than half of the amount) on the bills
presented.  Those dirty little secrets are why increasing numbers of providers
are dropping out of the system (by not accepting new Medicare patients).

The US government has demonstrated that it is incapable of running a health
care system efficiently.  The US military's system (which the government has
been quietly downsizing and outsourcing since at least 2004), Medicare, the
American Indian Health System and the VA health system.

The US government for decades has promised everything to everybody in some
form of benefits, and then the congress routinely underfunds those programs because
they are expen$ive - Medicare being the biggest single example.

There's no reason to expect that anything devised by those 537 pompous, preening,
posturing gasbags (I include the executive along with congress) will accomplish
anything other than the destruction of the US health care system - and the US
economy.  And short of a revolution, there's nothing anybody can do about it.

BTW, Alaska - like Texas - might be able to escape some of the damage because
of its oil revenues.  Texas built a terrific public health system using revenues from
its oil industry over a period of decades - it's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is one
of the best in the country if not on the planet (and AFAIK there isn't a *dime* of
federal money in it - other than Medicare, of course).

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